Help! I need a bigger board!

You do get diced once in a while, but it is not necessarily game over G1 if sz2 or Égypt fails.

Germany can really be a tough nut to crack, and even if the German players dream of Africa and Moscow takes a serious blow on G1, he can really dig in and make it very difficult for the allies to get a foot in in Europe.

A chunk of armor in E. Europe, stacks of inf in western and Germany and an airforce threatening to take a shot at that essential transfer fleet can take a long time to crack.

When I feel I am behind, I often take more risks than usual - going for that 50% UK Navy battle, or making risky strafing attacks on an exposed USSR stack.

You can also try to advance faster with Japan - maybe try to take India J1 or by doing the risky pacific double move hitting both sz52 and the US battleship+transporter at the western us shore on J1.

On second thought, #3 is a “tactic”, not a “strategy”.

You should probably skip #3.

@Bunnies:

@12doze12:

Germany? With Germany I mostly build tanks and some fighters. I try to flank SU and go for sea lion and send some infantry to Africa

and with Japan?  Fighters and transports mostly but also some other navy units. I try to take SU and UK closest territories and at the same time I try to take some of the US islands and go for Australia.

It’s probably a bit more than that.  You might be opening yourself up to brutal counterattacks.

Let’s say that you send 4 tanks to attack 3 infantry for control of a 3 IPC territory.  You kill all the infantry in one shot, and lose 2 tanks.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  You killed 9 IPC of units (+9), gained 3 IPC from the territory, and lost 10 IPC (1 tank) in exchange.  So you went +2. (+9, +3, -10)

But suppose Russia counters with 2 infantry 1 artillery 1 fighter.  There’s a good chance you lose 2 tanks (+10 IPC to Russia), while Russia loses about 2 infantry in exchange (-6 IPC).  So there Russia went +7 (with the +3 for the territory).

Maintaining such a rate of exchange will quickly bleed Germany dry.  Sure, your attacks go plus, but if Russia’s attacks consistently have even bigger pluses, that’s bad news.

In other words - watch those expensive German tanks.  If you’re throwing them away, that’s an easy way to lose quickly.

Another comment - if Russia’s building all infantry early, you probably won’t have the power to push early with tanks unless Russia carried out a two-territory attack with lousy dice, or tried a risky triple attack.  Try a G1/G2 infantry heavy build, and switching to more tanks later, and completely cutting out the air buys.  (If you buy air, you can try to contest control of the Atlantic, but a total ground buy strategy works decently too, and is something you should probably try at least once or twice to see the differences in play).

Japan shouldn’t be buying fighters.  Assuming UK killed the Japanese fighter at Kwangtung and moved its sub at Australia to range of French Indochina’s sea zone, your J1 buy should probably be something like 1 destroyer 3 transports.  You start with 2 infantry on Phillipines, 1 on Okinawa, 1 on Wake, and 6 assorted ground on Japan (Tokyo).  You’ll pull two of those units off on J1, leaving 8 units on Japan and the surrounding islands, so a 3 transport build leaves you starting J2 with 4 transports and 8 transportable ground units.  At the end of J2, you will want Japanese transports at French Indochina in most cases; one of those can take units from East Indies (island) to French Indochina on J3, so you will want to build at least 6 ground on J2.  So on J3, you will have 6 ground on Tokyo, and 2 on East Indies; with 4 transports, you can move them all into Asia.  Slight variations include additional transport buy(s) on J2 for early attacks on Africa and Australia/New Zealand (for the last, using infantry from Solomon Islands, Caroline Islands, and New Guinea as applicable.

If you’re buying that much ground, then air’s pretty much out of the equation.

If US tries to build a big Pacific fleet, build a few subs (not fighters).  Subs are WAY cheaper than fighters, and hit very hard.  Japan starts with two battleships, two carriers, six fighters, and a bomber.  US should probably only have a battleship and transport in the Pacific at the end of J1 (and a US destroyer at Mexico).

By the way, try to take China with Japan.  The US fighter makes the US infantry a major threat.  Without the US infantry, Japan’s pretty much neutered.

You can try installing TripleA; look for Bunnies_P_Wrath; I’ll try to take you through a game.

Thank you soo much, this really helped me, I’m goign to play with him this weekend and with this information I’m really exicted.

Thanks men !!!

What skills and strengths do you need to play as USA?
What skills and strengths do you need to play as USSR?
What skills and strengths do you need to play as UK?
What skills and strengths do you need to play as Germany?
What skills and strengths do you need to play as Japan?

My brother and i play spring 42 and he beats me alot. Any allied strategy will help. Thanks in advance

I haven’t played it before.

I really need to get some more f2f games in with some experienced players. I play my uncle who used to play the classic MB version with my brother. My uncle is really good at seeing things that might be a potential problem in future rounds so I try to pay attention to what he does and file that information away for future use. It is hard to remember all that stuff sometimes though. I have played all the AA board games with my uncle and he usually beats me in the global games but we are pretty even in the battle specific games like Bulge or Guadalcanal.

@Imperious:

should upload in 5 seconds.

Aah, much better, many thanks :) (The problem is I have only about 500 MB left on my HD, so I simply can’t afford to keep your .pdf’s on my laptop :roll: )